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1) I spend a lot of time in the Query Letter Hell section of the Absolute Write forums. (It's inside the Share Your Work forum, and it's only visible to logged-in site members, for a variety of reasons.) More reading than commenting, but even so. It's a learning experience. What some of the trends in various genres are right now, what sorts of stories people are telling, how damn hard it is to write a query letter... But also it's a fascinating view into line-editing. When you need to try to boil down most of a novel into an enticing 200-word summary, it highlights a lot of issues on how to make a sentence sing. Or what makes a series of sentences fall flat.
I've taken to doing my feedback as a pretty heavy-commentary line-by-line thing, and a lot of times I find myself saying, "This sentence implies this, and it makes me expect I'll immediately receive more information on this other thing, and it's telling me that you think this aspect of your protagonist is the most important information to give readers." Which is giving me insight on how to do my own line edits. It's not just what a sentence says immediately, but how it's building up the expectations for the next sentence.
...which I suppose I knew already, to an extent. But it's still interesting to see it played out in a teeny tiny format like that.
2) I spent a lot of spring break working on novel edits.
No one told me line edits were this brain-breaking. I had a vague idea that once I'd done all the hard structural stuff, I'd just do a nice little polish where I cut a lot of adverbs.
Well, I'm cutting a lot of adverbs. And putting others in. And removing prepositional phrases. Trimming dialogue. Un-trimming dialogue as I realize that person doesn't speak concisely and cutting that word repetition wouldn't make sense. Removing unnecessary explanations and descriptions. Adding in more explanations and descriptions to clarify or set the scene more.
It's taking me hours per chapter, and since I've never done this at such a length before, I'm not even sure if I'm doing it right. Sigh. Who knew this writing stuff was so hard?
3) I read a lot more slowly than I used to, and this makes me sad. A lot of my friends produce Books Read lists which creep rapidly upward. I started one for this year, and I'm currently on 14, including re-reads.
...but not including partially finished books, of which I have a lot, because apparently if I'm too tired and/or stressed, my brain just refuses to continue with a storyline past a certain amount of tension. Which means there are a lot of books I'd really like to finish, and cannot convince myself to do so, because as soon as I pick them up my brain goes "Oh god what if this ALL ENDS IN TEARS" and hides in a corner until I go play a nice soothing video game, or re-read a book where I know it has a happy ending.
Sigh. It's very much a geek thing to valorize quantity of books read. Admitting that I can't read so many as I used to, or read them quickly, or finish them properly, feels like admitting to a substance abuse problem or terrible lack of manners. It's shameful. But such is.
4) Greek continues to be hard. Latin continues to be hard. My brain is very tired.
5) Buying a house is so god-damn stressful I get a panicked adrenaline hit every time I see an email from the realtor or loan dude these days. And I'm not even the one handling the paperwork. I hope to god this wraps up soon, or someone's going to find me hiding behind the couch, rocking back and forth and muttering Latin conjugations to myself.
And do you have any idea how dirty it is behind that couch? Cats, I tell you. Lots of cats.
I've taken to doing my feedback as a pretty heavy-commentary line-by-line thing, and a lot of times I find myself saying, "This sentence implies this, and it makes me expect I'll immediately receive more information on this other thing, and it's telling me that you think this aspect of your protagonist is the most important information to give readers." Which is giving me insight on how to do my own line edits. It's not just what a sentence says immediately, but how it's building up the expectations for the next sentence.
...which I suppose I knew already, to an extent. But it's still interesting to see it played out in a teeny tiny format like that.
2) I spent a lot of spring break working on novel edits.
No one told me line edits were this brain-breaking. I had a vague idea that once I'd done all the hard structural stuff, I'd just do a nice little polish where I cut a lot of adverbs.
Well, I'm cutting a lot of adverbs. And putting others in. And removing prepositional phrases. Trimming dialogue. Un-trimming dialogue as I realize that person doesn't speak concisely and cutting that word repetition wouldn't make sense. Removing unnecessary explanations and descriptions. Adding in more explanations and descriptions to clarify or set the scene more.
It's taking me hours per chapter, and since I've never done this at such a length before, I'm not even sure if I'm doing it right. Sigh. Who knew this writing stuff was so hard?
3) I read a lot more slowly than I used to, and this makes me sad. A lot of my friends produce Books Read lists which creep rapidly upward. I started one for this year, and I'm currently on 14, including re-reads.
...but not including partially finished books, of which I have a lot, because apparently if I'm too tired and/or stressed, my brain just refuses to continue with a storyline past a certain amount of tension. Which means there are a lot of books I'd really like to finish, and cannot convince myself to do so, because as soon as I pick them up my brain goes "Oh god what if this ALL ENDS IN TEARS" and hides in a corner until I go play a nice soothing video game, or re-read a book where I know it has a happy ending.
Sigh. It's very much a geek thing to valorize quantity of books read. Admitting that I can't read so many as I used to, or read them quickly, or finish them properly, feels like admitting to a substance abuse problem or terrible lack of manners. It's shameful. But such is.
4) Greek continues to be hard. Latin continues to be hard. My brain is very tired.
5) Buying a house is so god-damn stressful I get a panicked adrenaline hit every time I see an email from the realtor or loan dude these days. And I'm not even the one handling the paperwork. I hope to god this wraps up soon, or someone's going to find me hiding behind the couch, rocking back and forth and muttering Latin conjugations to myself.
And do you have any idea how dirty it is behind that couch? Cats, I tell you. Lots of cats.